Sex as a Political Condition: A Border Novel is a raucous, hilarious journey through political dangers that come in all shapes, cup sizes, and sexual identities, a trip into the wild, sometimes outrageous world of the Texas-Mexico border and all geographical and anatomical points south.

Honoré del Castillo runs the family curio shop in the backwater border town of Escandón, Texas, and fears dying in front of his TV like some six-pack José in his barrio. Encouraged by his friend Trotsky, he becomes politically active—smuggling refugees, airlifting guns to Mexican revolutionaries, negotiating with radical Chicana lesbians—but the naked truths he faces are more often naked than true and constantly threaten to unman him. When a convoy loaded with humanitarian aid bound for Nicaragua pulls into Escandón, his journey to becoming a true revolutionary hero begins, first on Escandón’s international bridge and then on the highways of Mexico. But not until both the convoy and Honoré’s mortality and manhood are threatened in Guatemala does he finally confront the complications of his love for his wife and daughter, his political principles, the stench of human fear, and ultimately what it means to be a principled man in a screwed-up world.

I don’t know how to feel about Honoré. On the one hand, he does what he has to do to take care of his family, but on the other hand, piss him off enough and he’ll strangle you until he regains his senses. I have a feeling that he would agree with my assessment since he wants to get out of the barrio criminal life but pretty much just trades it for another kind of illegal activity in the name of activism. While Honoré confuses me, Flores makes me feel like I know him. And really, you have no choice since the speed of this novel crawls with descriptions, dialogue, and asides. Reading this has opened my eyes to a whole other world within the very state I reside. I don’t think many books can accomplish that. Check this one out if you want to explore the dark side of humanity but not get depressed about it.

A native of El Paso, Carlos Nicolas Flores is a winner of the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize and author of a young adult novel, Our House on Hueco (TTUP, 2006). As a director of the Teatro Chicano de Laredo and a former director of the South Texas Writing Project, he has long been engaged in the promotion of new writers and writing about the Mexican American experience. He teaches English at Laredo Community College in Laredo, Texas.